RED founder Jim Jannard has reveled that the Hydrogen One is now expected to launch to pre-order customers on October 9th. The black aluminum model will ship first, Jannard said in the H4Vuser.net forums, with the titanium models to follow. "The Ti version has proven to be very challenging in production," Jannard explained. "My bet is that these will be highly desirable and extremely hard to get for several months even after the official launch."

The Hydrogen One is then expected to launch on AT&T, Verizon and Telcel on November 2nd. Only the aluminum model will be available at first, with pricing set at $1295 for the Black and Shadow models. The titanium version of the RED Hydrogen One is expected to launch at carriers in 2019, and even then, it'll only be available in limited qualities.

Finally, Jannard dropped some info on a special Houdini developer version of the RED Hydrogen One. This version will be "extremely limited" and will only be available to customers who have already pre-ordered the Hydrogen One. You'll also have to agree to the terms and conditions, which include only posting good photos from the camera and only saying nice things about the phone itself. Since the Houdini model consists of pre-release hardware and software, RED wants you to report bugs and issues rather than share them publicly. If you don't follow these rules, RED could brick your device.

The Houdini Hydrogen One will include pre-release versions of RED apps that are still in final development. There will also be a feedback app so that you can easily share info with RED. The Houdini model will receive updates on a weekly basis, and you'll need to install them as they're released. RED says that the Houdini phone will also come with a 128GB microSD card.

So there's the update on the RED Hydrogen One. It's an exciting device for several reasons, including the fact that it's the first smartphone from a well-respected camera company and because it's got unique features like the 5.7-inch holographic display. Because of that, it's exciting to hear that the phone might finally be getting close to launch. Hopefully RED doesn't encounter any more issues so that it can get its phone into the wild and into our hands.